Miss Snail Pail

About Miss Snail Pail

Miss Snail Pail is a Healthy Alternative to Pesticides - aka a snail abatement specialist. She is my first and heartiest socio-ecological alter ego. When I returned to the United States from a coral restoration trip in Bali, 2004, I saw things differently in my parents' yard full of snails. I couldn't separate any human actions from how it affects other species on land and in the ocean. The question of abundance, resources and interconnectivity became central to everything, so I started my interactivist, perfomative business of hand-collecting and eating them. Their empty shells filled with wax and wicks become escarglows to symbolize the ongoing cycle of life, death, and renewal.

Elevated from "pests" back to their historical place as valuable life and deserved member of haute cuisine, helix aspersa are welcome guests in gardens. MSP aims for backyard balance with these iron-rich micro-livestock. If you smash, curse, and poison them, Miss Snail Pail's approach is for you.

Miss Snail Pail has cooked for SlowFood dinners, intervened at Maker Faires, ReadyMade Magazine parties, Farmer's Markets, concerts, hurricane relief events, conferences, and street fairs. Film festivals, including the 2011 Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, CA, the largest environmental film fest in the US, have screened "On the Trail with Miss Snail Pail," a short documentary by Greg Young and Golden Bear Casting. In 2006, a multimedia Miss Snail Pail installation was in the "Food as Activism" show at The Lab in San Francisco, and MSP led people on snailing expeditions.